The Suicide Shop

The Suicide Shop

Jean Teulé

With the twenty-first century just a distant memory and the world in environmental chaos, many people have lost the will to live.

Business is brisk at The Suicide Shop. Run by the Tuvache family, the shop offers a variety of ways to end it all, with something to fit every budget.

The Tuvaches go mournfully about their business until the youngest member of the family threatens to destroy their contented misery by confronting them with something they've never encountered before: a love of life.

Jean Teulé lives in the Marais with his companion, the French film actress Miou-Miou.

of paint and of course the apple. Careful, it’s poisoned! This way, you can kill yourself just like Alan Turing did. The only thing we ask of you, if you don’t have any objection, is that you leave us the painting. We really love hanging them up there. They act as souvenirs for us. And, besides, it’s pretty, seeing all those apples in a line under the ceiling. They go well with the Delft tiles on the floor. We already have seventy-two of them. While people wait at the cash register, they can look

commands: ‘Poison me, Marilyn.’ Wiping her lips, Marilyn Tuvache looks at him and replies: ‘No.’ 15 ‘What do you mean, no?’ demands her mother in astonishment, hands on her hips at the back of the store. ‘Yes, why not?’ repeats her father in his cable-knit waistcoat, pushing his way through the crowd to find out what’s happening with Marilyn: ‘Has she broken down?’ ‘I will not kiss that boy,’ his daughter tells him. ‘But why? What’s wrong with him? He seems quite nice and he’s a

contemplates her child and finds only cause for regret: ‘Why, oh why did we test a condom with a hole in it?’ Seated to her left and facing Alan, Marilyn starts blubbering again and censures her parent: ‘And what about me, Mother, why did you want me to have death in my mouth like a rattlesnake? You never think about the future!’ ‘The thing is … preparing for the future, we … given our profession …’ apologises Monsieur Tuvache at the end of the table. ‘We’re more accustomed to the short term,

minister said: “When I went on holiday to my grandmother’s house in the country, she woke me every morning by throwing live adders into my bed. Well, actually they were dead grass snakes, but boy was I scared! When I came back to the City of Forgotten Religions, I stammered with terror and peed in my pants. Uh-oh! Now it’s starting again …” And there was indeed a smell of urine in the room. The minister of defence intervened: “I was told: close your eyes and open your mouth. I thought it was to

bouncing around in all directions. You couldn’t see or understand anything any more. All of this because a scoundrel … made the members of the government breathe in laughing gas! Well, Alan?’ Finally he rolls his eyes, in which Chinese advertisements are reflected. The eleven-year-old child recoils. ‘But, Father, I didn’t know! I was wearing Mother’s gas mask and I didn’t notice. I took the bottle of desert breath from its usual place, but I’d forgotten we’d changed suppliers … and now it’s